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Tags: Water Water Everywhere / Venice Travel / Italy Travel / Weather / Floods / Wakeboarding / Adventure Travel / Holiday Travel / → All Tags

Venice Is Flooded Again; Everyone Go Wakeboarding!

The terribly wintery weather currently hitting Europe right now is bringing the lagoon waters of Venice up into the piazzas and reminding us of one of our favorite quirky stories from last year: that of the guy who wakeboarded through a flooded St. Mark's Square. We've posted the video for you again above, and believe us that it's worth watching all two minutes because the Red Bull guy also wakeboards in a canal. This is what happens when you combine horrible weather, a sinking city, and an opportunist tourist on energy drink.

Each year, this high water, or Acqua Alta, hits the Italian city at its weakest time: when the tourists and locals are all in town to celebrate the holidays. It also doesn't help that the lowest (and therefore most affected) place in town is the visitor mecca of St. Mark's Square. When the waters get knee-high here, you'll see Venice become a network of raised platforms as sidewalks—here's a great picture to demonstrate. Come to think of it, we should add "leaving the rain boots behind" to our list of the Top Five Tourist Mistakes in Venice.

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Tags: Christmas Alternatives / Holiday Travel / Venice / Venice Travel / New Years Travel / New Years Alternatives / Romantic Travel / → All Tags

Cancel Christmas To Suck Face In Venice Instead

Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn have the right idea in the movie Four Christmases; ditch the family for a romantic vacation this holiday. Venice is a reliable spot for a you and your mistletoe partner to get away for some alone time. And it's not too late to buy tickets. Kayak is offering round-trip airfare to the starting at $1,099 during the holidays. That's expensive for the rest of the year, but not during this season—it's a bargain.

Of course, the obligatory romantic thing to go is take a gondola ride in the canals, but that's the number one offense on our list of what not to do in Venice. While riding a gondola with only two people can get pretty expensive, don't let that deter you from enjoying the canals, even if it's by vaporetto, or water bus. The canals are a big part of the city's mystique and being on the water in the winter will give you a reason to snuggle with your honey.

Or do more than snuggle...

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Tags: What Not To Do In / Tourists / Venice Travel / Venice / Italy Travel / Lists / → All Tags

What Not To Do In Venice: The Top 5 Tourist Mistakes

Gondolas, palaces and 'O Sole Mio"—ahhh, the usual romantic image of Venice. Granted, the city known as "La Serenissima," is quite lovely and enchanting, but also full of money potholes and tourist stereotypes.

Because we like you, and because we've had our fair share of Venice visits and wish all the same enjoyment for yours, we're helping you out with our list of What Not To Do In Venice: The Top 5 Tourist Mistakes.

Check them out, after the jump.

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Tags: Prime-Plane-Spotting-Map / Plane Spotting / Alitalia / Venice Travel / Italy Travel / → All Tags

'Marco?' 'Polo!' Hop A Boat To Plane-Spot In Venice

If you know anything about Venice, you know that it is a city built on water, so it's quite fitting that the perfect location for plane spotting is onboard a boat. But not just any boat, we're talking about the water taxis between Venice's Marco Polo Airport and Venice proper. The airport sits on marsh land right on the coast, while the tourist-filled portion is out in the middle of the lagoon.

Going between the airport and the city of Venice therefore means taking either a private boat or the Alilaguna Waterbus right underneath the paths of arriving and departing flights. While you rock on the waves of other speeding water taxis passing by, you can look up at airplanes from carriers like Alitalia and other major carriers. Smaller LCC airlines like Jaunted personal favorite Germanwings sadly won't be found here, but at Treviso Airport.

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Hugo Chavez and Paris Hilton Take Venice Film Fest By Storm

The big news at the 66th Annual Venice Film Festival—aside from George Clooney introducing his latest girlfriend to the world—has to do, as always, with movie debuts that tend to get film buffs riled up in their plush, reclining chairs. This year's festival drew names including Oliver Stone, Matt Damon, Michael Moore, and—oh, god—Paris Hilton to the celebration of international film.

Stone had one of the more memorable red carpet moments of the festival when he walked buddy-buddy style with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to the premiere of South of the Border, his film about the leader and stereotypes associated with him. As The Telegraph UK reports, the two were surrounded by a swarm of 50 bodyguards. Necessary, sure, but also in keeping with Stone's penchant for controversy.

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It's Clooney On A Boat! George Sings For His Superfans in Venice

Often overshadowed by its cousins in Toronto and Cannes, the Venice Film Festival isn't so much forgotten as snuck into most A-listers' schedules in a rush of press trips. But attendees at this year's Venetian outing got a treat yesterday: George Clooney, performing live! One night only!

Also, one song only: After technical problems hit a screening of his new movie "Men Who Stare At Goats," the world's favorite bachelor (despite bringing along his new girlfriend) serenaded the crowd with "O Sole Mio"—tune of stereotyped gondoliers everywhere. Who knew he could sing, besides everyone who saw "O Brother Where Art Thou"?

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Michael Moore Floods Into Venice For The International Film Fest

Today in Venice, the city is full of prosecco glasses clinking and red carpets rolling out as the Venice International Film Festival begins—the world's oldest film festival—and this year brings another impressive roster of films battling for the Golden Lion prize.

Actually, come to think of it, SkyEurope had routes to Venice's Treviso airport; we sure hope no one is stranded elsewhere trying to get to Venice for the films, because they'll sure be missing out on some good stuff. For instance, Michael Moore is using the fest to premiere his newest: "Capitalism: A Love Story," about the US economic meltdown.

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Where To Drink Jaunted's Favorite Spritz Cocktail In Venice

While the summer is at its peak and you're no doubt tired of chugging bottled water under the sun at tourist sites, we're going to hit some of the world's best watering holes and down their famous summer cocktails. Bottoms up!

As dusk hits the lagoon of La Serenissima, tourists retire to their hotels for naps or plain cooling down from hot days under the Adriatic sun, spent museum-hopping and souvenir shopping. This is the cocktail hour in Venice, when it feels as though the locals emerge after lying in wait for the tourists to tire. To celebrate the beginning of another evening of socializing and good food, the cocktail hour usually focuses around Venice's signature local drink: the Spritz.

Based on either Campari or Aperol—with Campari the typically male version and Aperol (order "Spritz al Aperol") for women—a Spritz is a happy little red-ochre potion which can be found year-round in Venetian bars. Nonetheless, summer turns us away from our usual Prosecco and towards the fresher comforts of a Spritz at the Ciak 1 bar in the San Polo district.

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After 900 Years, Venice's Canals Become Equal Opportunity Employer

It's a familiar site on the water street of Venice, the striped shirts and flat hats of the gondoliers swaying as they expertly steer their black boats underneath bridge after bridge, but now there'll be some long blonde hair joining the club.

After 900 years of the profession of Venetian gondolier belonging totally to men, La Serenissima has her first woman plying the waters: Giorgia Boscolo, a 23-year-old wife and mother of two, who also happens to be the daughter of a gondolier. She passed the gondolier test back in 2007, but had to endure an apprenticeship up until recently when she took the oar of her own boat.

In order to become a gondolier, no matter your sex, you must "learn how to steer the banana-shaped boats from the back and the front ... take English courses, study sailing law and demonstrate perfect knowledge of Venice's canals and landmarks." This isn't like scuba diving, which you can get certified in during a week-long vacation. What we now want to know is if she'll be operating some kind of reservations service, now that she's the freshest addition to Venice's canals in centuries.

Related Stories:
· Venice Hails First Woman Gondolier [Life In Italy]
· Tutti in godola, vi porta Giorgia [la Repubblica]
· Venice Travel Coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: La Repubblica]

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When In Venice, Don't Forget To Drink The Water

Nowhere is the saying "In Vino Veritas"—or "there is truth in wine"—more fitting than in Venice. If you aren't sweating buckets while lugging a giant camera around the dank city in the summer heat, then you're left to pondering the murky canals and their plague-ridden history. Best to order wine at dinner then, right?

Wrong. If there's one thing Italians love just as much as wine, it's their Acqua Minerale and Naturale, and since they are one of the top consumers of water in the world (at 40 gallons per person annually), it makes sense to give their own tap a hearty rebranding.

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Niche Dining On Venice Beach's Washington Blvd

Los Angeles is sprawling, hard to navigate, and - especially along the beaches - ostentatiously touristy. Los Angelenos are cynical, difficult to approach, and - especially along the beaches - ostentatiously anti-tourist. This creates a difficult situation both for visitors and for the local establishments that cater to them. Perhaps as a kind of survival mechanism, restaurants sometimes clump together in configurations very much resembling classic tourist traps.

One of those clumps lies at the end of Washington Blvd. Nearby residents insist that the street is in Venice. The expensive hotels that sit two blocks away are pretty sure it's part of Marina Del Rey. Either way the small street has dining choices from across the classiness spectrum, from the merely chichi to the very chichi to the... not. Many of those restaurants are actually quite good, popular with locals, and not at all trap-like.

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Tags: Selling Out Travel / Travel News / Venice / Coke / → All Tags

Venice Braces for Arrival of Coca-Cola Vending Machines

Notoriously awash with tourists, the Acqua Alta and Bellinis, Venice is about to add Coca-Cola to the mix as the city's official soft drink. Of course in a city that has a love-hate relationship with modernity, the multi-million dollar deal between Venice's mayor and Coke isn't going over very swimmingly.

According to the BBC, in an attempt to supplement the meager government funds earmarked for conservation, the city will receive $2.7 million from Coke for installing "sixty vending machines which will sell the drink all over the city, including at the main waterbus stations and reportedly even St Mark's Square, where a city ordinance already forbids picnicking by tourists."

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